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Category Archives: Wages

Join us in Westminster on 17 October, to tell our MPs that Britain’s dedicated public servants need a pay rise.

For 7 years, government has restricted public sector pay rises to less than inflation – or nothing at all. But prices haven’t stopped rising in that time, and inflation means nurses, firefighters, and other public servants’ wages are worth over £2,000 less than they were when the coalition government started in 2010.

Pressure is growing on all sides for a change of course, and a fair pay rise for public servants.

Union members will be travelling to Westminster to meet with their MPs on the afternoon of 17 October. And afterwards, we’ll be hosting a rally in Parliament Square, so MPs won’t be able to ignore our message.

We’ll be posting more details here as they are confirmed, but save the afternoon now.

We will be taking our next day of strike action on Tuesday 5th July as part of the ongoing campaign in pursuit of our pay claim to address the 14.5% fall in our wages in real terms since 2009.

The 5th July date has been chosen for maximum impact across London with many HE institutions also on strike that day.

Those of you with school-age children may be aware that the National Union of Teachers will also be taking strike action on the 5th in their separate dispute with their employers.

A more detailed email will follow but the plan for the 5th is that Middlesex University UCU will conduct a “Teach Out” on the Burroughs on the morning of the 5th (the day of the Annual Teaching and Learning Conference at Middlesex). Our “Teach Out” will address the government plans in the White Paper for HE and we will discuss the alternative vision for HE as seen by UCU, the Council to Defend British Universities and other organisations.

We hope to have a speaker from Middlesex Student Union to give us the view of the student body and to tell us about the growing national concerns about the retrospective rise in the interest rate on student loans etc.

There will be other opportunities for creative learning during the morning with interesting options for those of you who might need to bring your children to the “Teach Out”. In the afternoon there is likely to be a pan-London event involving a range of education unions. More detail on this in a later email. You are the UCU.

Do be part of the 5th July – this will be the liveliest picket ever.

Sent on behalf of Middlesex UCU Branch Exec Follow us via social media:

This free event is organised by GLATUC (Greater London Association of Trade Union Councils)

http://glatuc.org.uk/home.html

We aim to bring together councillors, trades unionists and community activists to share and develop practical strategies to resist austerity. We are looking for those who can share information on successes no matter how small – councillors, trade unions and campaigners – and those who want to learn and work together. Hear about

A must read new study from the New Economics Foundation looks at the headline negative inflation figures now circulating:

“Latest UK inflation figures have been greeted with an extraordinary amount of fuss. A 0.1% decline in the rate at which prices are increasing is not, by itself, especially newsworthy. But of course the symbolism of hitting a 2% rate matters. It means the Bank of England’s inflation target has, for the first time since late 2009, been achieved.

“Leaving aside the politics around this arbitrary target, there are three things to note here. First, the cost of living crisis is not over. Prices are still rising much faster than wages and salaries. Inflation is 2%. Average earnings, however, have risen less than 1%. In other words, the real value of people’s wages and salaries is still falling. Most people are still becoming steadily worse off, as they have been for the last five years. The figures for December also miss out the sharp rises in household energy bills, which will feed into next month’s numbers.

“Second, the fall in inflation has little to do directly with the government’s actions. The biggest reason for the decline in the overall rate of inflation was a fall in the rate of price increases for food and drink, down from 2.8% to 1.9% over the year. But Britain is a huge importer of food, buying some £20bn more from abroad than it sells to the rest of the world. The prices we see in the shops are to a large extent determined by what is happening internationally. And with the pound rising in value over the last few months, the price of importing food has declined. Alongside that, after years of sharp increases, the prices of basic food commodities like wheat and sugar have fallen globally over the last year.

“Third, there’s an unusual danger lurking underneath this. Strip out food, drink, and energy prices from the headline inflation and you get a measure of what is often called “core” inflation. This excludes those items that are most affected by pretty contingent, day-to-day factors to try and get a sense of where the underlying economy is heading. Core inflation, currently, is 1.7%, having fallen from 1.9%.”